SEOUL– A Seoul court on Thursday ruled in favor of the wife and a former aide of late former President Chun Doo-hwan in a lawsuit they filed to reverse the government’s decision to auction off Chun’s house in western Seoul to pay his criminal forfeiture.
Chun, a former Army general who seized power in a 1979 military coup and served as president from 1980 to 1988, was convicted of treason and bribery by the Supreme Court in 1997 and ordered to forfeit more than 220 billion won (US$183.8 million) for amassing slush funds.
He died at age 90 of chronic ailments in November last year without paying the bulk of the penalty.
The government auctioned off the mansion in 2019 to collect unpaid money.
Chun’s wife Lee Soon-ja and former aide Lee Taek-soo, who legally own the mansion’s main building and garden, respectively, had since filed the suit to reverse the action.
Their lawsuit only disputed the sale of the main building and the garden, not an annexed building owned by one of Chun’s daughters-in-law.
The Seoul Administrative Court concluded the sale is invalid due to procedural problems.
In a previous ruling, however, the Seoul High Court ruled against Chun’s daughter-in-law in a lawsuit seeking to nullify the sale of the annex, saying it was purchased with bribe money.
Source: Yonhap News Agency